ANOTHER ‘B’ WORD....BROKEN BROADBAND , THE ANYTHING BUT SOCIAL MEDIA

You may already have noticed that I am a bit of an alliteration addict. I define places by their alliterative potential. Hence, beautiful Bute; adorable Argyll; perfect Perth; irascible Inverness; magnificent Melrose; horrible Hamilton; edible Edinburgh....you get the picture of my pathetic personality defect? But my odd obsessive compulsive disorder (mild) is not to blame for the target of this week’s wrath and rant. Move over Bracken, you’re history. I bring you another bilious ‘b’ word here in the back of beyond: broadband.

I am imagining that all 19,000 of you TSF readers are now screaming in glorious harmony along with me that well known rural refrain: “I HATE BROADBAND”. To the tune of “I HATE MONDAYS”...or, perhaps more accurately, “What Broadband” to the tune of the BT adverts telling us how fibre optics will change our lives and accelerate our happiness. Not any day soon hereabouts, Not So Openreach?

Is there anything on this earth more aggravating and frustrating than that wee circly doodah that means you probably live more than ten miles from a city centre. I know we’ve moved to the country, a full hundred miles from Glasgow’s vortex of fibre optic excellence, but we can talk to men on the moon and long lost cousins in Canada and itinerant adolescents in Oz, yet we cannot download a DEFRA form in under three days - even with a full moon, a following wind and several wifi boosters here.

I remember – oh about 20 years ago, back in the mists of time before mobiles were endemic and people used to talk to each other and, indeed, watch terrestrial television even when it was a bit regional and boring – making a TV programme about how broadband was going to liberate city dwellers from their urban employment chains and transform rural lives by bringing fast, efficient, reliable communication nirvana to us all. Cottage Industries would flourish. Folk would work from home. The miracle of the internet age was upon us and we could all look forward to living happily ever after with our PCs, laptops and smart phones, dispense with cars and public transport and never need to visit an urban conurbation ever again. Except on market day, obviously. We would conduct our businesses and love affairs online; all form filling would become virtuously virtual; the paperless, weightless, unfiled office of our sylvan dreams....

I sit here, uncomfortably squished between a chair, a sofa and a hard place, in the single solitary 12-inch bubble of internet accessible corner of this House to Die In to write this. That’s hard when one’s nether regions are significantly broader than 12 inches. But this is the only tight little spot in this house from which communication with the outside world can take place – from phone calls through tax returns to downloading This Farming Life. Despite satellites and wifi boosters and more cable than Cape Canaveral. My early vision of a totally wireless house, a clutterless temple to minimalism and stylish simplicity is a cess pit of wires and usb ports and dangling dongles.

Who remembers the good old days about a hundred years ago when communication involved picking up a sleekly handsome Bakelite phone with a proper handset that you could hold comfortably under your chin and have a chat whilst drinking a cup of tea and munching a digestive biscuit at the same time. Sure it had a cable but just the one and you never, ever got caught out by – oh having last year’s connector for this year’s device. Or having bought it on the internet in the wee sma’ hours which is the only time you know there will be sufficient capacity to download anything more than a teeny tweet. You’re tired, bleary eyes, you make mistakes. Welcome to my internet existence. And if it wasn’t a chat you were looking for you could still expect to talk to a rational human being in plain English and get your problem fixed, there and then.

It’s just like home delivery services. There is nothing modern or even mildly efficient about them whatever the next day/by midnight tonight promises they tempt you with. When I was a girl, my mum used to pick up said Bakelite phone, dial an easy to remember three digit number, read out her list to a nice man at the other end, and get her full week’s grocery order delivered to our kitchen door two hours later. Complete with fresh butter and cheese in artisan wrapper , Askit powders and six bottles of full fat Irn Bru. Aah, those were the days. Convenience shopping was convenient.

But hey I am not a Luddite. I have embraced technology and I will not be beaten by it. The communications struggle continues.

Take this morning, for example. I tried to call Vodafone to get my mobile contract renewed. No signal. Unless I were to go outside, up the hill and cower behind the big beech tree. However, it was raining, a not uncommon occurrence in Argyll - sadly for mobile users. So I tried going online to their website – something mobile phone companies encourage you to do, presumably, so that you lose the will to live and go off quietly to die without cancelling your exorbitant monthly rental charges. No internet connection. The wiggly wormy circly thing was in full 360 degree swing. That circly thing defies the natural laws on perpetual motion, by the way. I tried several times until eventually the miracle download happened and I was off. Except that apparently my password was wrong. The website suggested I should call – for free – on my mobile and get a new password. But no mobile signal. I could feel the black dog of broadband induced depression descending.

But I am a farmer’s daughter and so I put on my boots and big Barbour and me and my mobile went forth to brave the elements and make the call. No signal. Up the hill behind the house a bit farther. Still no signal. Oops, wrong side of the big beech tree? Nope, must be that low cloud getting in the way of the satellite. Still higher I climbed, above the tree line and verging on requiring emergency oxygen supplies, but I now had a clear line of sight on what I believe is the Vodafone mast. And still no signal. What could the problem possibly be? I was by now so out of breath I wouldn’t have been able to hold a coherent conversation anyway, it occurred to me. Sodden, saddened and wheezing gently, I gave up and stomped back down the hill. Kicked the neighbouring farmer’s dog. Cursed the minging midges. “I hate technology”, I roared to the heavens and hurtled the dead device into the undergrowth....yes, the undergrowth that is bracken.

Broadband to bracken. Alliteration is too good for it.

PS Promise next week to get out of the B zone and into something more interesting – the F word, anyone?